The History of Pedagogy

by Gabriel Compayré

584. Progressive Education and Rousseau.—It is undeniable that Madame Necker owes much to Rousseau; but she is far from always agreeing with him.

For Rousseau, man is good; for her, man is bad. The first duty of the teacher should be to reform him, to raise him from his fall; the purpose of life is not happiness, as an immoral doctrine maintains, but it is improvement; the basis of education ought to be religion.

Even when she is inspired by Rousseau, Madame Necker is not long in separating from him. Thus we may believe that she borrows from him the fundamental idea of her book, the idea of a successive development of the faculties, to which should correspond a parallel movement in educational methods. Like the author of the Émile, she follows the awakening of the senses in the infant. She considers the infant as a being sui generis “who lives only on sensations and desires.” She sees in the infant a distinct period of life, an age whose education has its own special rules. But at that point the resemblances stop; for Madame Necker de Saussure hastens to add that, from the fifth year, the child is in possession of all his intellectual faculties. He is no longer simply a sentient being, a robust animal like Émile; but he is a complete being, soul and body. Consequently, education should take account of his double nature. Moral education ought not to be separated from physical education, and cannot begin too soon.

“It is a great error to believe that nature proceeds in the systematic order imagined by Rousseau. With her, we nowhere discern a commencement; we do not surprise her at creating, and it always seems that she is developing.”

So, in education, we must know how to appeal, at the same time and as soon as possible, to the different motives, instinctive or reflective, selfish or affectionate, which sway the will.

Often, in practice, the two thinkers approach each other, and, even in her protestations against her countryman, Madame Necker de Saussure preserves something of Rousseau’s spirit. Thus, she does not desire the negative education which leaves everything to nature. The teacher ought not to allow the child to do (laisser faire), but cause him to do (faire faire). But, at the same time, she demands that the will be strengthened, so that education may find in it a point of support; that the character be hardened; that some degree of independence be accorded to the child; “that in permissible cases he be allowed to come to his own decision; and that half-orders, half-obligations, tacit entreaties, and insinuations, be avoided.” Is not this retaining all that is just and practical in Rousseau’s theory, namely, the necessity of associating the special and spontaneous powers of the child with the work of education? Madame de Saussure adopts a just medium between the active education which makes a misuse of the master’s instruction, and the passive education which makes a misuse of the pupil’s liberty. She would willingly have accepted this precept of Frœbel, “Let teachers not lose sight of this truth: it is necessary that always and at the same time they give and take, that they precede and follow, that they act and let act.”

585. Originality of Madame Necker.—Though she had reflected much on the writings of her predecessors, it is nevertheless to her personal experience and to her original investigations that Madame Necker owes the best of her thought. She had herself followed the advice which she gives to mothers, of “observing their children, and of keeping a journal, in which a record should be made of each step of progress, and in which all the vicissitudes of physical and moral health should be noted.” It is a rich psychological fund, and at the same time a perpetual aspiration after the ideal, which makes the strength and the beauty of the Progressive Education. With what penetrating insight Madame Necker has pointed out the difficulty and also the charm of the study of children!

“It were so delightful to fix the fugitive image of childhood, to prolong indefinitely the happiness of contemplating their features, and to be sure of ever finding again those dear creatures whom, alas, we are always losing as children, even when we still have the happiness of keeping them!”